


The Importance of Tactics

by Franzbibliothek



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Role Playing, not bdsm, references to Captain Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 14:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzbibliothek/pseuds/Franzbibliothek
Summary: “Oh, this is clever, Jeeves.” I said, pulling against the silk restraint that encircled my wrists. When slack, it could hardly be felt, but when strained against, it tightened. There was something in that I'm sure poetic Johnnies might be tempted to compare to love, or maybe horse racing, whichever came to mind first.





	The Importance of Tactics

“Oh, this is clever, Jeeves.” I said, pulling against the silk restraint that encircled my wrists. When slack, it could hardly be felt, but when strained against, it tightened. There was something in that I'm sure poetic Johnnies might be tempted to compare to love, or maybe horse racing, whichever came to mind first.

“Thank you,” Jeeves adjusted the knot once more, before giving it a nod. “I had an uncle who was an able seaman. He taught me some of the finer points of the profession.”

I gave him a warmish Wooster look. My man really was like one of those cornucopia whatsits, just when you think it's been drained it to the dregs, more comes flowing out.

“I always knew you came by your fish diet honestly.” I said and tugged the restraint once more. “Though I don't suppose he imagined you would use the knowledge for this kind of fish, what.”

“No, I doubt this use occurred to him.” Jeeves said, and checked my hands once more, taking care that there was no chafing and my circulation was unhindered.

Satisfied at last, he stepped back and drew up to his full height, towering over the Wooster corpus, sitting chained to the bedpost as I was.

“It is no use trying to escape, Lord Wooster.”

I realized that this was, as they say in show business, my cue.

I made a show of fighting against my bond before giving a passionately performed, “But the Navy must be alerted of the French before they reach the colony, Captain Claret!”

I will take this moment to give an aside, as I am sure the above exchange raises a number of questions for my more perceptive readers.

Firstly, a fly-on-the-wall might ponder, if flies were so inclined to ponder, why the young master had been restrained.

It is true that in a household of two men of iron wills, cool steel will cross from time to time. However, in all past engagements Jeeves restrained himself from any word or action that might be taken not in the feudal spirit.

How, then, the pondering fly might consider, had Jeeves skipped over the tactic of poorly ironing the young master’s trousers and instead galloped whole hog into this Atila business?

Secondly, an equally perceptive fly might wonder, why would I refer to my faithful Jeeves, known far and near as a valet without peer, as this roguish Captain Claret?

It is true that I did not uncover Jeeves’s given name until somewhat later in our acquaintance than one might expect. But it begs disbelief that I should miss the mark so completely by calling him Captain Claret. The Wooster ancestors might not have fought with longbows at the Battle of Cressy, but my aim was not so far off as that.

Lastly, the total fly flock might cry, how did Bertram W. Wooster, an amiable man-about-the-town, come into information desperately needed by our English navy? It seemed bally unlikely!

The answer to these queries lie in the fact that Jeeves and I were engaged in a type of play acting.

I can hear the exasperated cry now: But for what reason are you play acting? There was certainly no audience roosting in my bedroom corner, clucking about when the feature would get to the real action.

To answer these points require taking a spyglass back to a number of weeks earlier:

One morning, I tucked somewhat listlessly into a lovely plate of eggs and b. while Jeeves sat at my right reading the paper, having already finished his morning repast much earlier, as is his habit. By this point in our living together, I knew a great deal of the Jeevesian habits.

“Bertram, is something on your mind?” Jeeves asked, and I stopped poking at my eggs. I looked down at them to see I had inadvertently created an abstract of my Aunt Agatha.

In our cohabitation, Jeeves had also learned something of my habits.

“It's piffle, Jeeves. I was just thinking on a dream I had.”

I thought that would end the matter. At the Drones there is nothing that ends a conversation quite like a fellow who wants to regale the rest on how he played the tambourine with Clara Bow in front of an audience of brown bears. Diverting to be sure if your involved, but duller than dirt to get an earful of.

“What sort of dream was it?” Jeeves asked, clearly I underestimated his sense of duty. It, like his intelligence and talents, were a fountain ever-flowing sort of thingummy.

“It was a rummy sort of dream, hardly the thing to speak on in front of the eggs.” I said, attempting one last valiant stand. Jeeves folded his paper and gave me a frank stare. I knew it was all over.

“The eggs, I think you'll find, will bear it.” Jeeves said.

The eggs perhaps, but what of the Jeeveses?

His eyes, bright with the light from his big brain, bored into the Wooster loaf. I had some concern it might become toasted and good for nothing but being marmaladed.

“Really, I barely remember a thing, except, rather, you showed up. Only it wasn't quite you. Rather, I think the lemon got mixed up with this picture I saw last week, you know the one, about the Vikings. You were all dressed up in the ancestor's togs and going about the old family business.”

“And this was distracting you from your breakfast?” Jeeves asked.

“Well, not exactly, you see, I was thinking, wouldn't it have been a good deal of fun if a sort of brave, dashing dream-Bertram had popped in and tried to put an end to all the ravaging wheeze.” I said.

“And would you have stopped me?” Jeeves asked, with that terrible curiosity in his eyes which he tried his best to conceal, his other features as composed and reposed as could be.

“No, that was something of the rummy part. However I go about it, I always seem to wake up on your boat with a lump and a one-way ticket to Lapland. That's what happened to the poor bird in the film.”

“And what would I do to you while I held you prisoner?” Jeeves asked, easy as he pleased.

“Well, I hadn't gotten as far as that, but don't you find it rather childish? This sort of make-pretend? Suitable perhaps at a fancy dress party, but hardly the breakfast table.” I alluded to the scandalized eggs which looked up at me with aunt-like outrage.

“To the contrary, there are sources which say Alexander the Great would take on the persona of Achilles while his companion Hephaestion would represent Patroclus.”

“So, you're saying there's something of a long, honored tradition of this sort of thing?” I asked.

“According to the historical record.”

“Huh, if I’d known the historical record could get so gingery, I might have given it more mind as a nipper.”

The corner of Jeeves's mouth twitched. “I have often thought that the curriculum as commonly taught leaves something to be desired.”

For my readership, how easy it is to imagine that Jeeves would take it on himself to procure the necessary costumes later that day.

While this Wooster might have felt some initial reserve, the benefits of the arrangement soon made itself clear.

To be both audience and actor makes for a fine sort of show. If I were a journalist I would have written a review to make any director feel self-satisfied and send the theater-going public running.

Only the point of it was that no one knew about it. Unlike Alexander the Great, I would not think it quite worth bringing up in my autobiography.

A few weeks pass this way with the occasional performance, matinee, and encores. Then I went to see one of latest pictures, a Captain Blood, which didn't quite deliver on the red stuff but did deliver on the swashbuckling, and a sensational score, and a swoon-worthy actor by the name of Errol Flynn.

Most conversations at the Drones centered on who could portray this nautical hero the best. In the end, all contests were indecisive, though the smoking room’s chandelier was decisively altered, but they did give me some idea of who might be ideal to play this dark-haired hero of the common man.

Which brings us back at last to our opening scene, the dread but noble Captain Claret and his fair captive, Lord Wooster.

“If you defended the colony against the French, you could be pardoned for all your nefarious deeds... Would nefarious be the word I want, Jeeves?”

“Nefarious is correct, though villainous, abominable, or heinous would all equally serve.” Jeeves supplied.

“For simplicity's sake, I propose we use nefarious and who knows where it might go in the future.” I said. Momentum is really the key of these things, I've found.

“Very good.” Jeeves said with an incline of his head, before once again assuming a more threatening posture. “What guarantee can you give me that you will ask the King to pardon me?”

“Is the word of a Wooster not enough?” I tried my best to keep my tone suitably hesitant, but it can't be denied that anticipation flavored the words.

See, this was the real nut of this whole acting gag. Now Lord Wooster doesn't know a thing about this Captain Claret besides his career choice and his spiffing profile. I, on the other hand, know that this abominable buccaneer prefers Shakespeare to Nietzsche and objects to purple socks on principle.

So, while Lord Wooster is reserved on the whole matter, I'm rather biting at the bit to get to the best parts.

Jeeves kneeled down in front of me. When we had planned this out, he had insisted on it. He believed that having the two actors at the same eye level would heighten the emotion of the pivotal moment.

“I don't think the pardon from a fickle king is enough for me to risk myself and my men.”

“Well, if you don't want a pardon, then what do you want?” I asked.

“Can't you guess, Lord Wooster?” Jeeves said, looking up through his lashes at me.

Here is the wonder of theater. I had been present when first hashing out the general dialogue. I had come up with my own share of zinging quips. But on paper there had been no way to prepare me for just that particular expression on Jeeves's face. A soft sort of pleading look, to which I would have surrendered any piece of my wardrobe, if he only asked.

In the full force of it, I was rendered mute. No longer was I Lord Wooster, but Bulstrode the butler of amateur theatricals.

“Bertram? Are you alright?” Jeeves asked. Without waiting for a reply he undid the restraint. For all his piratical costume he was far more merciful than the unwashed masses on an actor who had forgotten his line.

“I'm fine, just lost my place.” I said.

Jeeves sat beside me on the bed and gently rubbed my wrists anyway, before putting the length away.

“I feel as if I rather ruined things.” I fiddled with my cravat. “You put so much work into putting it together.”

“‘Ruined’ might be a hasty pronouncement. Practice has some place in perfection.” Jeeves reached towards me, and undid the cravat.

He folded the fabric and set it down, and returned to open my collar. “If I might say, Lord Wooster, you never answered what you think I wanted.”

Perhaps declaring ruin had been hasty. “Can't say I've ever been the keenest at thinking on my, ah, hands.” Jeeves’s hands were preoccupied with unbuttoning my waistcoat.

“I know mercy isn't really the done thing with you piratical types, but I don't suppose you could give me a hint?” I asked.

I was only just aware of Jeeves's mouth twitching upward before I found myself flat on my back on the bed.

Might it never be said that a Wooster couldn't take a hint.

After a jolly good time of tacking the sail, raising the colours, and shivering more than a few timbers, we gave our final bows rather out of breath.

Jeeves only relaxed a moment before he was upright and rescuing our costumes from their crumpled heaps.

I watched the ceremony with half-lidded eyes. Normally, I'd drop off like an anchor after vigorous exercise, but a thought occurred to me, as it occasionally does.

“It seems to me, Jeeves, that we have put together these shows in humoring me.” I said. “Isn't there any sort of game you'd want to play? I know Spinoza is more of a mystery than a romance…”

It was Jeeves's turn to be the silent as he lifted my coat from the floor. He brushed it and hung it in the closet before answering, “I have on occasion thought of one interesting scenario.”

* * *

 

“Oh, Hannibal!” I gasped, and did my best to not grab at Jeeves’s hair, even as he was performing something of the Battle of Cannae on my much weakened flank. I had to desperately think of something to distract myself to prevent the curtains from crashing down prematurely.

“...Say, do you think that anyone ever called him Hannibal while they were in the pash together? Seems like a bit of a, ah, mouthful to me.”

Jeeves pulled back to give a thoughtful look. “I'm afraid to say that Livy never felt the need to elucidate that particular aspect of the general’s life.”

“Something of an oversight, I think, on this Libby's behalf. Not to insult your pal, Jeeves.”

“None taken. But I've always felt that the wonder of theater is to give life in fiction to what we do not know in fact.” At this he returned to his conquering, which I enjoyed a great deal, but the thought snagged.

“What was this Hannibal's surname?”

Jeeves paused in his crossing of the Wooster Alps to reply, “Barca.”

“So, Barky maybe? No, that's no good.” I wondered aloud, prompting Jeeves once again to pause and offer his insight into the matter.

“Perhaps for this scene we might forgo names.”

“You speak some wisdom, Jeeves. I don't imagine Scipio invited the old rival to call him Skippy in the more tender moments.”

“It seems unlikely.” Jeeves agreed.

I realized with some shame that in my musings, I had rather muddled the whole business. I cast my mind back to some likely dialogue.

“You might take me, Carthaginian— Am I saying that right?”

“Admirably.”

“—But you'll never take Rome!”

Jeeves sat up so we faced one another. There was a dangerous quirk in the corner of his mouth.

“It seems you have fallen for my stratagem. Rome was never my aim.” He said, wrapping his arms about me and ending the crosstalk portion of that night’s proceedings.

**Author's Note:**

> huh, I never imagined "not bdsm" would be a tag I'd need and yet... I was also considering adding "not as much bondage as the summary might imply". Know that if I did in fact write a 'Jeeves ties Bertie up with one of his ugly ties' fic, it would be titled "Jeeves Ties the Knot", so until then...
> 
> This was actually inspired, oddly enough, by Perfect Nonsense (a theatrical re-working of The Code of the Woosters), when I read in the introduction:
> 
> “...we revelled in the idea that the inscrutable and dignified Jeeves might draw on some hidden talents to play a number of the other characters.”
> 
> Considering that in the source material he pretends to be a Scotland Yard detective, I don't think interpreting Jeeves as having a slightly ridiculous theatrical side is all that far from the mark. And thus this silly little thing was made. 
> 
> I'm working on something a little longer and actually slightly serious, so this was my break from that.


End file.
